If da Boss were crossed, that is, by upstart Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer.

Simple: in the next muni election Hague would run his own slate of candidates and secure for it the top ballot line. Heading the ticket? Dawn Zimmer: no not THAT Dawn Zimmer but somebody of the same name Hague would recruit from white pages of the phone book.

But those carefree days are gone and Chris Christie can’t simply reclaim his soul outa the pawnshop: deal making with blue-eyed devil/Dem. So. Jersey warlords is one thing, but C.C. Rider has squandered nearly all that his family staked in going GOP. Tom Kean Sr. boycotted Christie’s state-o-the state last week: that’s more than signal enough the Anglo-Republicans have once and for all concluded: no gentleman, he.

What a pickle has Chris wrought! All instincts say fight like a bastid, but they’re watching you!

As Judge Smails warned Danny Noonan, a would-be gentleman must abide by the rules of decent society, especially if you have the misfortune of being born Jersey-Irish (or Irish-Italian). See how my fellow apostate I-Cath Tom Moran, in a desperate bid to convince outsiders that C.C. does not represent the ‘core’ Jerseyan, lauds Kean Sr. as “always a gentleman’ but praises with a faint damn Kean’s fellow former guv and good pal Irish Brendan Byrne as “always a wit.”

Is that still the best we Harps along the Eastern Seaboard can aspire to even tho Byrne–like Kean–went to PU for God’s sakes! I mean c’mon how far removed is ‘wit’ from ‘witty stew bum’!

I gotta hunch Christie’s next hi-profile appearance will be in April at the coronation of Saint JP2; it’s not like Christie-booster Nerk Abp. Myers can do Chris any good locally, given his own self-inflicted predicament.

But even in Rome C.C.’s Jersey self-knowledge deficit will hound him like it’s hounded so many of our forebears.

When the guv visits Rome he might discover—to paraphrase the late George C. Wallace–that Robt. Johnson spoke both better Polish AND better Jersey than either the soon to be unsavorily minted saint or the soon to be shit-canned Gov.

Or, for yet another sloppy paraphrase–this time from the Coen Bros. first great film–I don’t care if you’re the Pope of Rome: out here in Jersey, you’re born and you die alone; lucky are the few who check out before that ol’ Hellhound catches up.

On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York by James T. Fisher (Cornell University Press)
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